Chatt Hills HT July 2016: Day 1

After an amazing week at TIEC we headed down to Fairburn, GA for another weekend of adventure but this time eventing style.

IMG_0184With Houston my strongest phase was always Dressage with Stadium and XC being my struggle bus phases. Now with Annie our dressage leaves a lot of room for improvement and the OF phases are where we really shine. I am actually really grateful for this as I am confident that with more time Annie and I will get the flat work figured out.IMG_0338

The weeks following our last horse trial were spent working on getting more consistent flat work and slowly but surely we are getting longer moments of connection and relaxation in a sea of tension and resistance.IMG_0323We did see a lot of improvement but unfortunately that wasn’t reflected in our dressage test which was still inconsistent. We earned a score of 42.3 which landed us 12th place (aka last place) going into stadium.IMG_0350

Because Annie is the best little horse ever we were double clear in stadium and moved up 2 places for 10th place going into stadium.

The photographer was awesome but takes longer than I am used to to process pictures so I probably won’t get to share those for about 2 weeks. Not a big deal just not the usual 2-3 day turnaround or instant gratification that most HT togs provide.

@equestrianathart and me waiting for @khmackin to finish warming up. #chatthillseventing

A photo posted by bekaburke (@bekaburke) on

Luckily one of my favorite people made the trek from southern GA on Saturday and got some good shots of us! 🙂IMG_0365

Last but certainly not least I finally remembered to use my cambox! I still need to play with the positioning a bit but now you all can see just how fun Annie is jumping too!

Annie – Chatt Hills BN Stadium from Hillary McMichael on Vimeo.

Stay tuned for the XC video tomorrow 🙂

16 comments

  1. Lauren says:

    What a good baby! I’d much rather have excellent jumping phases too.

    I wanted to come up on Sunday for XC but then I saw you were riding at an ungodly hour. Too early for me, especially the day after a show!

  2. Jenn says:

    I’m glad you had a successful show weekend, and that Beka was able to grab some great shots of you and Annie! Usually, a 3-day turnaround for pro pictures is almost unheard of, and anything under a week is still really impressive, so maybe give the photographer a few more days?. In my experience, around 2 weeks is pretty standard for pro pics to be published so I don’t start getting antsy until then.

  3. Rhiannon says:

    Looks like Annie is really coming into her own. Some of those jumps look hard to stay with at times. Kudos to you!

  4. Shelley says:

    Your used to hunter jumper land, which have maximum a day for pro photos lol LOVE this and the video. You and Amanda can compete now who has the most awesomest cambox videos!

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